PARAGUAYPARAGUAYA survey carried out after a two-month long UNICEF campaign designed to raise awareness about family violence against children and provide parents with information about positive parenting asked 753 parents about their childrearing opinions and practices. When asked what discipline strategy they used the most, 57.1% of parents said they talked to their children, compared to 55.6% before the campaign. Just over one parent in ten (11.5%) said they shouted or raised their voice, compared to one in five (20.4%) before the campaign. Before the campaign, 3.6% of parents said they most often “used a belt or other object”; after the campaign, 0.9% said this. After the campaign, nearly nine out of ten parents (88.9%) believed it was possible to bring up children without hitting them or using verbal violence, compared to 76.6% before the campaign. One in ten (10.2%) did not think it was possible, compared to one in five (20.3%) before the campaign. Seven in ten (70.3%) of those interviewed remembered the campaign. Of these, 46.5% thought that the campaign would influence their friends’ and neighbours’ way of bringing up children a lot, and 34% a little.
(First Analysis y Estudios, 2010, Sin Violencia si Educa Mejor: medición comparativa post campaña¸UNICEF)
A 2010 UNICEF study found that 61% of respondents had experienced violence or other kinds of mistreatment from their closest family members. The study, the first of its kind in Paraguay, involved over 800 children and young people aged 10-18, attending 54 private and public schools in different areas of the country. 35% of respondents had experienced severe physical violence (being hit with objects, kicked, burned or suffocated) in their families and 13% had experienced “light” physical violence (including slaps, having their hair pulled and being forced to stay in uncomfortable positions). 13% had experienced psychological violence such as insults and threats of abandonment. The physical violence had serious consequences, with 13% of respondents reporting being hit until they bled and 7.7% needing medical attention due to violence. More than half of the study participants remembered that they began to experience family violence at between 3 and 5 years old. Boys experienced more severe physical violence than girls, while girls experienced more psychological violence than boys. Physical and psychological violence was experienced by children of all social classes, although children at public and subsidised schools experienced more physical violence than children in private schools, while children in private schools experienced more psychological violence than their publicly schooled peers. Parents with a higher level of education were less likely to use physical violence – for example, 23.9% of mothers and 26.8% of fathers who had been to university used severe physical violence as a punishment, compared to 46.8% of mothers and 55.6% of fathers who had not been to school. The results of the study suggested that, as mothers spend more time with their children than fathers, mothers use physical violence more often than fathers. However, mothers were more likely to decrease their use of physical violence as their children grew older, while fathers were more likely to use a greater degree of violence than mothers and to continue to use it at the same level as their children grew older. Mothers who spent less time with their children used most physical violence – 27.7% of those who spent all day at home used severe physical violence, compared to 39.6% of other mothers who spent only some hours of the day or some days of the week at home. The study recommended that more research be done on this topic and on the various demands placed on mothers who work both inside and outside the home.
(UNICEF, 2010, Resumen Para Prensa: Estudio sobre maltrato infantil en el ámbito familiar, Paraguay 2010
www.unicef.org/paraguay/spanish/py_resumen_periodistas_estudio_14set10.pdf (in Spanish))